Daddy Issues

By Tim Wortham,

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.” This Frederick Douglass quote opens the story of a man’s journey to overcome the trauma of his father’s sudden absence from his home and, ultimately, his life. Author Tim Wortham, Jr. recalls childhood experiences and the impact his father’s departure had on his development. His story helps dispel the myth that daddy issues are reserved for girls and women. This book is written for the men and boys who have struggled with processing their feelings around their fathers’ absence and the people who love them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 4, 2021
• ISBN: 9781636303031

Book preview

Chapter 1

Nuclear Family or Nuclear Bomb?

My story started out pretty fairy tale, if there is such a thing. I was youngest of a set of siblings, one boy, one girl, born to high school sweethearts who married young. My father was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and my mother in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. They met through the churches they attended during the many times of fellowship where they would take turns visiting the other’s location. I never asked my mom if it was love at first sight, but I know their love was real.

When they got married, my mother left Bethlehem and moved to Philadelphia. It was the start of a new life for her, a new journey with her husband by her side, and she was ready! For a while, the newlyweds found themselves living in Bridgeport, Connecticut. It was there they welcomed their first child, my sister, into the world. I came along a mere fourteen months later back in Philly, and our family unit was complete. We were ideal, perfect even, at least in appearance. My mother embraced her life as wife and mother. She was happy to care for and dote on her husband and children. This story, however, is meant to focus on my father.

My father was known by his gifts, and he had many—A gifted orator, writer, boxer, carpenter, and renowned evangelist traveling the country preaching the gospel. He was the life of the party; quick-witted with a laugh that was nothing short of infectious. I have heard stories of how fast his hands were as a boxer and how he could have gone professional if he wanted to. I have heard songs, seen plays, and read books written by his pen. Hearing all these stories inspired me to reach out to family and friends to share more memories with me, and the response was incredible. I heard things like:

Once a woman had severe damage on the back of her home. Your dad and I totally reframed the back portion of the home for this woman. I learned so much about carpentry working with your dad.

He would keep you in stitches. He loved to make you laugh. One of his favorite songs was ‘Search Me Lord.’

Your father was an anointed preacher at a young age. He studied to show himself approved. He was an authentic praiser with a unique shout. He was loved by older preachers and certainly had great opportunity to preach in multiple ministries.

I remember hearing stories of how he could ‘preach you under a pew.’ My wife’s former pastor admired his strength in school as a teenager. She was encouraged by his stance and gift he used on the school grounds.

One time he went to school to learn how to sew. Now we were sewing for years mind you. He comes home, and while he was laying his pattern, he turns to me and said, ‘This is a dart,’ as if I didn’t know.

The thing that cracked me up the most was that Timmy, by himself, if he really wanted to, he could beat up everybody around him, except his older brothers. He wasn’t afraid to box any of them, but they didn’t necessarily want to box him! He was deceivingly strong and fast with his hands!

I remember his play being presented at the Cornucopia Theater to a packed house. A young man in his twenties, my father compiled a young vibrant cast and shared his vision with the world. How brave and courageous he was, and though very young, I was old enough to be proud. Fast-forward many years, and I saw my father’s name listed as a writer on the debut project for the group Sounds of Blackness. This was a major label release from a group whose single Optimistic was in heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere. The difficulty of being gifted, well-known, and highly regarded is often the burden of living up to the image and expectations others have of you.

It was no different for my dad. He was a superhero to me and apparently to many others as well. He wrote music and plays, he renovated homes, and he preached, all while battling feelings of inauthenticity. You see, his entire life, he was taught a truth that made him feel like conforming to his cultural norms and demands was his only option. An admission and acceptance of who he really was would shatter his way of life and undoubtedly destroy many relationships that mattered most to him. He was better off living as the image than the person.

Three of the relationships in jeopardy just happened to be my mother, sister, and me. If my father was to fully embrace his identity, he would be ostracized by the institution he served so faithfully all his life, but he also would drastically alter our family dynamic. So, he existed. We existed in this acceptable state for more than five years (more than three years of my life) until he just couldn’t anymore.

Obviously at three or four years old, I don’t remember the transition clearly. My memories of the time spent with my dad in our home have all but faded. I know that some of my earliest memories at my day-care center in Bartram Village occurred after he was already gone. I can’t recount for you the day or the conversation he had with my mother or even her reaction as he walked out the door. I just know it happened, and I hadn’t even started kindergarten yet.

We lived with my paternal grandparents which for us as kids was awesome but had to be at least a little challenging for my mother. I’m sure this wasn’t what she saw when she dreamed of marriage and the family she would start with my father. Here she was a single mother of two living in the home of the parents of the man that just broke her heart. She did everything, the right way, according to the Christian faith they both shared. How could this now be her reality? What did she do to deserve this? These are the thoughts I am able to consider as an adult, but back then, my experience was much different.

Back then, I was just a kid clinging to any semblance of normalcy I could find. There is this label of, momma’s boy, which is often ascribed with some negative connotation. What about those of us who had no alternative? For some of us, all we had was Momma! I became a momma’s boy because Momma stayed and raised me. I wear the designation with pride because I have an amazing mother. She is strength personified and remains a buoy in my life. She represented stability for me as a child, and she made the devastating merely difficult for my sister and me.

My mother worked whatever shifts were available, so she wasn’t always able to tuck us in at night. Her youngest sister moved from Bethlehem to help her out. So here we have my mother and her sister living in my paternal grandparents’ home. We lived on the second floor at first while my aunt occupied a room on the third floor. Some years later, after returning from our year spent living in Bartram Village, we also moved to the third floor. Yes, my mother, sister, and I all lived in one bedroom for years! The house was often crowded which was certainly harder on the adults than it was on us kids.

I always had a lot of cousins around to play with. The three who were there most consistently were in a similar situation. Their father had left as well, but something was different. Their mother was my father’s sister, so her presence in her parents’ house seemed a bit more reasonable. I am pretty sure she felt more at home than my mother did. It wasn’t at all because my mother was mistreated or anything, but she had left her hometown to start a life with her husband and ended up in his parents’ home with their children. I don’t know if my mother ever considered returning to Bethlehem. In Philadelphia, she had a job, a network of support, and my sister and I had established meaningful relationships as best we could at that age. I am sure her decision to stay had far more to do with our well-being and sense of stability than her own convenience.

In spite of this less than ideal reality, my mother didn’t project her displeasure on us. I know she was a bit guarded, and I always got the sense that she felt like she wasn’t exactly an equal to my paternal aunts and uncles who resided at the house. I think those feelings did manage to trickle down a bit as I spent many days convincing myself that my cousins were the favorites and my sister and I were the charity cases. I felt like we were pitied because of our circumstances.

I remember my cousins sharing stories of trips to the beach or seeing them open cool toys at Christmas and feeling so down on myself. There were no trips to the beach for my sister and me. I never got a bike for Christmas and didn’t own a video game system until I was old enough to purchase one for myself. We never had cable television in our room, and most of what we enjoyed was from thrift shops. So even though none of us had a father around, there were still indicators that my lot was much worse. I was less privileged for lack of a better word.

In spite of all that, some of the best memories of my childhood took place in that house. I lost teeth there, got my Voltron toy for Christmas there, became obsessed with Hulk Hogan there, and so much more. Yes, I shed many tears in that house, but I seem to remember far more laughter and love than pain and sorrow back then. I had plenty of distractions playing in the basement or the yard. We all went to camp together each summer and swam and played kickball at the Kingsessing Rec Center. Oh yeah, and every now and then, my dad would stop by.

Chapter 2

Where’s Daddy?

Can you imagine having to answer your three-year-old when he asks where his dad is and you really don’t know? Yesterday, Daddy was here, ready to play and read stories. He was a source of guidance and security, and now he is gone. I wanted everything to go back to normal, but I was about to find out just how subjective a concept normal really is. We were a foursome, balanced, even, and steady: two males, two females; two adults, two children—what perfect symmetry.

Now we were three, and though Schoolhouse Rock tried to convince me three was a magic number, it seemed the magic had left our family. We were now incomplete, and our identity had been compromised. What does it mean, long-term, to be a fatherless child? This was before terms like blended families or bonus children. This was an era of shame. You felt like everyone was whispering when you entered or exited a space. It had to be because your dad left, right?

There was no arrangement that I know of between my parents. No visitation schedule, no predictability at all regarding when I would see my dad. My mom could rarely answer that simple question for me—two little words that probably stung every time I uttered them. I am sure she wished she had answers for me. I am also sure the answers she could have offered were too much for me to comprehend at that age. All she could do was reassure me of her own presence and try to make sure my sister and I didn’t fully experience the void that had been created.

It was on my mother to demonstrate strength and resilience so her anxiety